Fast & furious 7 becomes the fastest film ever to make $1bn globally

Fast and Furious 7 led the US box office over the weekend for the third consecutive week, scoring another $29.1m (£19.5m) to add to its $294.4m (£197.3m) total.

The hit sequel, which features the last on-screen appearance of Paul Walker, also broke a global record by becoming the fastest film to ever make $1bn at the box office. By the end of Sunday, it had made $1.153bn, which now makes it the seventh biggest film of all time.

In second place was the Kevin James comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 which made a decent $24m. It’s impressive when you look at the film’s 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating but less so when you look at the opening for the first film, which was a stellar $31.8m.

Making a strong impression in third place was another new entry, the social media horror movie Unfriended. The film made $16m from a budget of just $1m and marked yet another cheaply made success story for Blumhouse, the production company behind The Boy Next Door (budget: $4m, global box office: $48m), Ouija (budget: $5m, global box office: $99m) and The Purge (budget: $3m, global box office: $89m).

Elsewhere, animated adventure Home continued to do strong business in fourth place, adding another $10.3m to its $142.6m total while the Nicholas Sparks adaptation The Longest Ride fell fast with $6.8m for a $23.5m total.

Outside of the top 10, the Jonah Hill/James Franco thriller True Story opened with an unspectacular $1.9m from 831 screens. Doing far worse however was the Tom Hardy/Gary Oldman thriller Child 44 which made just $600k from 500 cinemas. The film had a $50m budget but had suffered from negative buzz and dismal reviews.

The biggest arthouse hit for the second weekend running was Alex Garland’s sci-fi drama Ex Machina which made $814k from just 39 cinemas, giving it the biggest screen average for any film in release.